Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

Mr Misunderestimated

Yes, George W. Bush’s frequent bouts of foot-in-mouth disease have not endeared him to the cerebral, especially in Europe. Then again, there are strong grounds to feel he simply does not care what people here think or want to know too much about us.

This was the guy, after all, who waited until the age of 54 before setting foot in continental Europe – for the June 2001 EU-US summit in Göteborg, Sweden.

Less than three months later, the defining moment of his presidency arrived. On 11 September, a splendid Manhattan morning suddenly took an apocalyptic turn as two passenger jets, hijacked by al-Qaeda, were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

It might be crass to describe an event which caused the deaths of 3,000 people as a political gift to the Bush administration. But with the benefit of hindsight, that conclusion appears inescapable. Before then, the unedifying squabble over perforated ballots in Florida the previous December had cast a controversial pall over his office. Now Bush Jnr had a new sense of purpose. The fight against terrorism was swiftly declared his number one priority.

Officially, EU policymakers view the problem of politically motivated violence with the same urgency; new transatlantic accords on improving police and judicial cooperation have been signed in response to the threat.

But on numerous occasions since then, there has been a stark difference of approach between the EU and the US to international issues.

In January this year, Javier Solana, the Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, spoke ruefully of the influence of religious fundamentalism on the White House. The Bush administration, Solana remarked, tended to see controversial questions like relations with Iran and the Palestinian Authority in black and white terms, whereas the EU takes a more nuanced approach.

“Good vs evil – that’s a fair point of difference,” says Bill Drozdiak, Brussels director with the German Marshall Fund of the US. “Solana had the correct analysis. He [Bush] will readily invoke his religion. That’s a troubling point for Europeans as it is for some Americans. But there is much more of a secular tradition in Europe. Europeans would not like to hear one of their leaders say they are guided by divine destiny.”

The idea that Americans are God’s chosen people seems to be assuming ever-greater prominence in Bush’s slowly enunciated rhetoric. A few months ago, he quoted one of his predecessors, Woodrow Wilson: “America has a spiritual energy in her which no other nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind.”

The suspicions which his alliance to the religious Right arouse have been compounded by his very Texan penchant for cowboy apparel and language (admittedly, though, he wasn’t sporting rhinestone boots when he labeled Osama bin Laden as “wanted – dead or alive”) and his courtship of big business (he has made no secret that the oil industry lobbied him to reject the Kyoto Protocol on global warming). A Brussels insider who used to lived in the Lonestar State explains that Texans, regardless of political affiliation, tend to have a deeper attachment to their region than their counterparts from other parts of the US: “They’ve a feeling they’re better than the rest of us. If you ask a Texan where he’s from, he’ll always say Texas first rather than America. You wouldn’t have somebody from Connecticut saying that.” (Ironically, Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut.)

“Texan culture does not travel well in Europe,” says Bill Drozdiak. “Bush was immediately greeted as a toxic Texan. His problem was that he followed [Bill] Clinton, who was widely regarded as the most pro-European president since John F. Kennedy. Bush got off on the wrong track and it has got worse ever since.”

For day-to-day dealings with the EU institutions, however, Bush has not chosen a fellow Texan, but Dutch-born Californian Rockwell Schnabel. In private, EU observers query whether the choice was ethically sound – Schnabel is a businessman, rather than a career diplomat, who had given $200,000 (€216,000) to Republican election candidates before receiving the Brussels posting. They also ask whether Schnabel, who can come across as spectacularly ill-informed about international affairs, is suited for the job.

Meanwhile, Bush’s determination to wage war on Iraq convinced many analysts he is more influenced by the militarist thinking of his Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld than the more internationalist approach of Secretary of State Colin Powell. His apparent lack of a long-term strategy for Iraq, where US and British troops are being routinely attacked by hostile locals, seems to be proving his Achilles heel – if recent opinion polls are to be believed.

Apart from presenting Jacques Chirac with a gift of leather-bound art books at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Evian, he does not appear to have made great efforts to heal the rift which the war created between the US and several European countries, especially France and Germany.

His tetchy relationship with Paris and Berlin is, of course, in marked contrast to his warm rapport with Tony Blair. The British premier was given credit some months ago for convincing Bush to work in tandem with the EU on implementing the Middle East ‘road-map’ and to show a greater interest in Africa. But the unrest in Iraq and the controversy in Britain over the death of David Kelly, the government’s advisor on Iraq’s weapons programme, has caused less attention to be paid to those dossiers.

“He [Bush] could probably make more overtures to people like Chirac and [Gerhard] Schröder,” says one journalist, specializing in transatlantic relations.

“But he doesn’t seem too inclined to do so. The thing at Evian was played up for the cameras but apparently he can’t forgive Schröder at all for some reason.

“Obviously Bush isn’t the sharpest tool in the box, although he does have certain qualities that people underestimate – a decisiveness and a forcefulness which other leaders don’t have. But he’s definitely not someone who is out to learn new things. I don’t think he is going to sit down and learn European history to soften up his European colleagues.”

In his ‘Dear George’ letter in the deliciously scabrous book Stupid White Men, Michael Moore asks if Bush is a “functional illiterate”. The question was prompted by Bush’s announcement that The Very Hungry Caterpillar had been his favourite childhood reading even though it was published in 1969 – a year after he graduated from Yale University.

“One thing is clear to everyone,” Moore writes. “You can’t speak the English language in sentences we can comprehend. At first, the way you mangled words and sentences seemed cute, almost charming. But after a while it became worrisome. Then in an interview you broke America’s decades-long policy toward Taiwan, saying we were willing to do ‘whatever it took’ to defend Taiwan, even suggesting we might deploy troops there. Jeez, George, the whole world flipped out.”

But Günter Burghardt, the European Commission’s Washington envoy, describes suggestions that Bush is less than bright as “not justified”.

“If you look at it from the other side – in terms of political leadership in Europe, if you ask is there anyone who is a particular genius, I think I would have problems giving you a name. A Texan is something particular in the US; it’s like a Bavarian in Germany. They have a certain way of reasoning and arguing and to draw any conclusions about IQ levels based on that is very dangerous.

“I have no problem considering him a serious interlocutor. He certainly listens to what Europeans have to say, whenever we have a meeting with him. But how far he takes what we say into account is another matter.

“It is true that he didn’t know the rest of the world [before he became president], compared to his father [George Snr], who travelled a lot when he was vice-president. I even remember ‘Father Bush’ calling in to see [then Commission president] Jacques Delors in the Berlaymont [the EU executive’s Brussels headquarters].”

No doubt Bush will spend today (11 September) in a solemn ceremony, honouring those who perished exactly two years ago. Before long, however, he will have to go back on the campaign trail as another presidential election is due next year.

Should the opposition Democrats select a strong candidate, factors such as the lack of an ‘exit strategy’ for Iraq and the continuing troubles in the domestic economy could scupper his chances of re-election.

Still, it would be wrong to write his political obituary at this stage. As he might say himself – don’t misunderestimate me!